The weather was ideal today for Helsinki City Run, the largest half-marathon in Finland. The rain stopped before the 3 PM start, but the clouds kept the sun away and the temperature remained nice cool +8C (46F). In open places the wind slowed me down a little, but I felt really comfortable in shorts and t-shirt and can't complain.
My finish time 1:34 is relatively slow (my PR is 1:21:25), but I'm happy with the result as it's 3 minutes better than my estimated time based on a test run. Also the course is not fast, as it is really not wide enough for 10 thousand runners (not even when divided into four start groups). Still it's obvious that I haven't done enough speed work for this race.
I did a 9K warm up and cool down, so I covered 39 km altogether in my new bright yellow Adidas Adizero Adios shoes. They performed very well both on asphalt and fire roads. I'd say this is probably the best shoe for marathon racing. My long X-Action compression socks and the shoes felt slightly wet all day long, but I didn't get any blisters or any other trouble.
Finally here's a short video that shows how it was today - a perfect day for running!
3 comments:
Ciao....you won over me...by 2minutes.
I put a video on youtube to show the arrive in the Olympic Stadium, maybe we arrive same time if you started behind me :)
The weather was just perfect and I am happy to know that Helsinki is a slow marathon, it means that I can do so much better next time.
Bravo Claudio, you had a fast start - only 5 sec from the gun to the starting line. But I'm not in the video as I started 12 sec slower than you.
We better train better for our next race! I need over 14 mins to beat my best half-marathon time 1:21:25 (set also in Helsinki, but the course was different then).
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